Save Keitaro
by Comp Ninja
Summary: The girls of the Hinatasou make a hazardous voyage to the deepest reaches of Keitaro's mind to save him from certain death.
1. Lost Soul

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Save Keitaro  
Lost Soul  
  
  
  
"Keitaro, I told you couldn't handle it, you idiot." Aoyama Motoko grabbed her sword and descended the stairs to everyone else gathered for dinner. Maehara Shinobu had surely cooked something worthy of a samurai's discerning palette, but Motoko could not allow anyone to eat the wonderful blessing of Shinobu's cooking until they heard the news. "Something horrible happened to Keitaro."   
  
Urashima Keitaro had not awakened from his meditation. For the untrained, even fifteen minutes of this type of intensive meditation could prove quite deadly. Keitaro had spent seven hours nonstop in the deepest form of meditation known to the Shinmei-ryuu, the free-fall meditation. Even at three hours, Motoko knew only a few well-trained meditation masters who ever lived to brag about such a miraculous feat. After a while, Motoko assured herself that the evident willpower and determination Keitaro showed everyday as male kanrinrin of an all-girls dormitory would safely weather the dangers of free-fall meditation.   
  
At the end of hour seven, Aoyama Motoko saw some congratulations in order. Keitaro had survived the free-fall meditation longer than any Shinmei-ryuu student in recorded history. When she tried to express her appreciation for his strength of mind with a pat on the back, Motoko's refined sense of touch detected something wrong. Motoko carefully guided her hand to his neck and finally realized what her touch had detected. Urashima Keitaro did not have a pulse. From the relative warmth of his body, Motoko could safely deduced that he only entered this state of living death a few minutes ago.  
  
"What happened to Keitaro, Motoko-chan?" Aoyama Motoko watched completely frozen as Narusegawa Naru excused herself from the table, approached her and lifted her up by the neck. "If you did anything to harm him, I'll personally kill you, sword or no sword." Everyone's eyes seemed to linger on Naru as she had Motoko pinned against a wall, repeatedly banging her head against the wall.   
  
Perhaps, at this point, she must have realized that she had showed an unneccessary spark of hidden passion for the safety of her "secret boyfriend," Urashima Keitaro. Frankly, Motoko imagined she could do better, but she had trouble telling her these thoughts with Naru cutting off oxygen to her brain. "I mean, if anything happened to the poor idiot pervert klutz, who would run the Hinata-sou? Yeah, I meant that. I mean, who wants to live on the street if they close down the Hinata-sou because of him? Huh?" Naru chuckled nervously as she returned to her seat at the table.   
  
Her blushing had transformed her into a neon red billboard for emotionally confused women. Sometimes, the two-faced Naru's wishy-washy feelings for him upraged even in her calm bushido-crafted sense of right and wrong. /Love him or don't love him, Naru,/ Motoko concluded. /You can't have it both ways./  
  
Aoyama Motoko explained the situation to the girls. Maehara Shinobu looked upset. Keitaro meant everything to her. Motoko always feared that Keitaro might take advantage of those strong feelings to force Shinobu to do something illegal and improper with him. Konno "Kitsune" Mitsune looked more confused than anything else. Big words like "chi interbalance" and "transcorporeal exhaustion syndrome" probably confused everyone there except Su Kaolla, who seemed to have a plan already brewing in her mind.  
  
*****  
  
Su Kaolla had a plan brewing in her mind. This whole problem with "off balanced" chi during prolonged thought immersion reminded her of her dream viewer. Keitaro had used it some time ago to experience his own nightmares, something to do with Narusegawa Naru and Sakata Kentaro. Narusegawa Naru found out that Kentaro had stalked her since her freshman year. Kaolla did not understand the word "stalker," but it must not have tasted very delicious, because Naru left Kentaro after she got a taste of his "stalking." Kaolla could revise Einstein's theory of relativity to take into account the peculiarities of quantum physics, but she failed to grasp simple concepts like "stalking," or "Toudai" or "Leave me alone, please."   
  
As Kaolla returned to the problem at hand, she remembered that the machine could burrow deep inside the mind of the target, seeking out images and displaying them. Of course, she doubted that the dream viewer could penetrate his mind in this altered state of consciousness. During the meditation, the life essence of Keitaro had fleed deep into his own psyche and stopped operating the parts of his brain necessary to breath. Keitaro could theoreticaly last up to an hour without breathing, according to Kaolla's calculations, but after that, Keitaro would start to suffocate and die. If Keitaro had fleed to the darkest reaches of his own mind, the dream viewer would not find him, much less convince Keitaro to surface.   
  
If they wanted to extract Keitaro from this self-induced coma, the girls would have to enter Keitaro's mind. Kaolla's machine could generate a model of Keitaro's psyche sophisticated enough to interact with his lost soul, but after that, none of the girls could leave the interactive environment. Only if they rescued Keitaro and return him to his proper state of consciousness would his restored soul discharge the foreign souls from his mind and out of the environment. If the girls failed to rescue him after they entered the environment, the girls would experience the last thoughts of a dying brain and Kaolla doubted their nervous systems could survive the resulting shock.   
  
/Do or die./   
  
Su Kaolla handed all the girls watches, all counting down from forty minutes, making a conservative estimate that Keitaro had already spent twenty minutes in this altered state. Kaolla explained her plan in detail to the other girls. Su Kaolla tried to keep the terminology simple. One small misunderstanding could prove disastrous to the success of this mission. In less than five minutes, Kaolla, in a whirlwind of numbers, equations, and computer circuitry, Kaolla had constructed the world's first fully functional psyche display interactive environment. As she predicted, the interactive environment could not pull a soul out once injected into a mind and she told everyone exactly what that meant. They seemed to understand words like "death" and "low chance of survival" quite well, but they still started to undress and latch on the VR helmets and sensory jumpsuits.   
  
Su Kaolla smiled at her own courage as well as the courage of the others. Kaolla spelled out quite clearly that this device could kill them, but she and the others had not taken more than a couple seconds to think over their decision. For a moment, Kaolla wanted to excuse herself and tell them that she needed to run the machine from the outside, but she knew perfectly well that her machinery could run itself just fine. Plus, once injected inside, she could not send messages to them or inject herself in later and they needed her help and expertise on the inside.   
  
Besides, she could not leave anyone behind, everyone had different ideas where to find Keitaro's soul and she did not want them travelling alone in Keitaro's brain. Narusegawa and Kitsune would pair up to search for him in his hopes and ambitions. Motoko and her would try to locate Keitaro in his fantasies and dreams. Mutsumi and Shinobu would go and seek out Keitaro in his conscience. No one alone could search all of his mind in the time allotted to them, sheer number alone would make this much easier.  
  
Breathing a deep sigh to clear her mind of doubt, Su Kaolla latched on the VR helmet as Motoko helped her into her jumpsuit as everyone finished strapping themselves in. Kaolla took a look at the clock. Thirty-four minutes left to save Urashima Keitaro as well as their own lives. Kaolla flipped the switch and a jolt of electricity went through everyone. Thirty-three minutes left.  
  
*****  
  
Aoyama Motoko blacked out and reappeared in a mist covered surroundings. In the distance, Motoko could see symbols and icons and symbols flying around, displaying passages from psychology books, billboards and three giant tablets. Aoyama read some words of the tablets and recognized some of the words written on them. One table on the right read things like, [worthless, pathetic, loser, klutz, idiot, incompetent, stubborn, weak, perverted] and the other on the left read things like, [noble, caring, selfless, compassionate, tolerant, invulnerable, determined, imaginative, hard-working]. The one in the center had nothing written on it.   
  
Motoko hated asking questions, but she also hated not knowing things. Right now, she desperatedly wanted to know what these tablets meant. Kaolla had appeared behind her, so Motoko decided to ask her. "What do these three tablets represent?"  
  
Kaolla looked up at them and scanned the contents of the two tablets. A sensor appeared out of nowhere in Kaolla hand and she held it up the tablets. After a second or two, the sensor came back with a read-out. "Tablets of self-image. It represents Keitaro's struggle to reconcile two conflicting self-images into one single self-image." Motoko took her senses off the tablet of the right. She knew every word on it word by heart, but the words of the words on the left tablet intrigued her. With very little imagination, one could see many, if not all these characteristics in Keitaro at one point or another.   
  
"He hasn't gotten very far reconciling, has he?" Motoko tried to appreciate the positive self-image, but one word on the negative list stood out like a sore thumb. "Perverted." Even if she ignore everything on that tablet, she could not ignore a simple fact of biology. Urashima Keitaro had a man's body, and heterosexual men by nature have perverted fantasies about women. She believed that simple fact so much, she planned to search for Keitaro's soul in his fantasies. Motoko excepted to find him in a fantasy with Narusegawa Naru, or herself, or even Shinobu.   
  
In reality, Aoyama Motoko had no idea what to expect, but she anticipated finding perversion wherever she turned in this pervert's mind. Kaolla said if they found Keitaro and convinced him to return, they would cheat death and save Keitaro. Motoko could care less about saving Keitaro, she wanted to confirm her suspicions of Keitaro's perversion face-to-face once and for all. He always acted like everything he did happened by accident, but Motoko knew that somewhere inside this nest of thoughts and weaknesses, she could expose the pervert within Keitaro to everyone. That would finally put an end to all this "Keitaro-the-innocent-but-well-meaning-victim-of-fate" propaganda that had risen in the other girls too gradually for Motoko to stamp out.   
  
As Motoko started to wander off to apprehend Keitaro in the middle of one of his fantasies, Kaolla grabbed Motoko and pulled her towards her. "We need to review the rules." Motoko gathered close to Kaolla. Su Kaolla rarely spoke so clearly that she did now. "First off, do not try to communicate to anything here. Only a real soul can talk to us before spoken to. If you try to speak with a dangerous mental image, it may attack you. If you don't speak to it, it will ignore you and continue its preset plans. Okay?"   
  
Motoko nodded. "Okay, Motoko, I'll wait here for the others and give them the same talk, you go find Keitaro in his fantasies ... over there!" Kaolla pointed her finger in a direction and Motoko bolted away, ready to expose Keitaro.   
  
/To think I almost congratulated you,/ Motoko thought bitterly as her sword materialized in her hand. /This time, Keitaro, you have no place to hide your dirty fantasies. I will find you./  
  
  
  
  
  
TO BE CONTINUED ... 


	2. Mononoke Within

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Save Keitaro  
Mononoke Within  
  
  
  
Narusegawa Naru had spent what felt like hours tearing Urashima Keitaro to pieces and putting him back together just to do it all over again. Urashima Keitaro almost choked on his own thoughts as he realized that he just referred to this creature as Narusegawa.   
  
"No," he reminded himself. "Not Narusegawa, just a Nightmare." He could not help mistaking of her for the genuine article. Since he had developed a near photographic memory of her body from countless accidents, this Nightmare probably resembled Narusegawa in more ways than he wanted to admit.  
  
As she winded up another punch, the Nightmare froze and listened to Keitaro's faint whisper. The words made her laugh. Everything made her laugh. "Pardon me. 'Not Narusegawa, just a Nightmare.' " She lowered her fist. "How do you know I share nothing in common with your precious Narusegawa? How well do you actually know her, Keitaro?"  
  
Keitaro felt thoroughly exhausted. As an embodiment of fear and anxiety in the domain of fears and anxieties, this foul creature made it a point to rattle Keitaro's nerves from time to time. It gave the torture a psychological dimension.   
  
Once again, this Naru had baited him into another argument. "I know her well enough, Naru." Even though she saw straight those his lies and bravado, Keitaro kept fighting the Nightmare as he had always done before, sticking up from Narusegawa's virtues and insuring his fears that a truly kind and gentle person lived deep inside her.   
  
Keitaro remembered what the town council had told him years ago as a child visiting the Hinata-sou. The wisest of the elders told him, "that everything in nature contained its opposite." Following this logic and his own beliefs in the natural goodness of people, he knew that underneath Narusegawa's hatred towards his clumsiness and her own violent outbursts resided the soul of a good person who loved him dearly.   
  
"Narusegawa," the nightmare corrected Keitaro, slapping him across the face for good measure. "You just called me Naru. You always call me Narusegawa, remember?" The nightmare knew he did not remember, that he could not remember.   
  
She, on the other hand, remembered almost everything. This nightmare loved bragging and she thought of her access to his subconscious memories as something to take pride in. Keitaro himself rarely ever noticed that he always called Narusegawa Naru by her last name, but when he thought about it, he knew his reasons. "Only the real Narusegawa ever deserved that kind of respect, Naru."   
  
If Keitaro had ever listened to reason, this nightmare would defeated him in every debate she had ever started with him. Fortunately, he choose to listen to the logic of his heart and that gave him a clear advantage over Naru because she had originally no heart, until she met his dark side. Keitaro looked out of the corner of his eye to see a dark figure approaching. "Speak of the devil."  
  
"Almost," the figure in the darkness replied as he stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself to Keitaro. "Call me Ken." Keitaro always liked the name Ken. Urashima Ken. Sure, it sounded generic, but it sounded a whole lot cooler than Keitaro, he knew that for sure. Dressed in black clothes and a trench coat that floated in the air like a Dracula-inspired cape, the figure sported a passing resemblance to Keitaro, minus the lack of glasses and vertical slit-like scar that ran through his left eye. Of course, in this realm, Keitaro no longer needed glasses to correct his impaired vision, so he looked a lot more like Ken than usual. Yes, without Keitaro's inhibitions, this representation of his repressed dark side had changed his name to Ken a long while ago.  
  
"Hello, honey," Ken said, letting his trench coat fall off him and float away into the darkness. As he turned to give the nightmare Naru a peck on the cheek. "Nice day at work?" Apparently with nothing better to do except torture Urashima Keitaro, they decided to indulge themselves into a deep lustful kiss of animal passion right in front of him.  
  
Needless to say, it repulsed Keitaro to watch two mental images. He hated seeing them like this, one, his devil's advocate in his fight to keep his faith in Narusegawa alive and the other, the manifestation of all his darker impulses, both embracing each other in such a untamed manner. As their hands started to drift into forbidden territory, Naru must have witnessed the scared and panicked look Keitaro could feel emerging on his own face. Naru broke away from Ken's rough embrace. "Oh wait, Ken. We have children present." Naru pointed impishly at Keitaro. "Perhaps, we should do this somewhere else."  
  
Ken turned his head to look at Keitaro, light from the dim lights overhead illuminating the scar along his left eye. "No, dear, I think my inner child needs a chance to grow up. Let him watch, he can take notes." A notepad and a pencil materialized in Ken's right hand and he pitched both at Keitaro.   
  
Keitaro clinched his eyes and looked away. "No fair, Keitaro, can't let you do that. [Turn around.]" Against his will, Keitaro cranked his head back onto Ken and Naru. "[Open your eyes.]" With all the force Keitaro could summon, he could not bring his eyelids to cover his eyes. It felt like a mouse trying to bench press a truck, completely hopeless. "[Pay attention and take notes.]" Keitaro involuntarily reached down for the notepad. As Naru and Ken started at each other, he could feel his hands scribbling down points of interest and various techniques employed by Naru and Ken.   
  
"Fight my will if you wish, but you only will make it stronger." Keitaro did not understand what Ken meant by that. Keitaro tried to ignore him when he talked like that. His dark side had a tendency to babble. Ken had enslaved him to his will by making him listen to his nonstop babbling for seven hours. Sometimes, Ken would get so wrapped up in his current situation that Keitaro gained the ability to blink his eyes or stop writing, but Ken's will and voice always bent Keitaro back in place.  
  
*****  
  
Aoyama Motoko gave this door a death stare as she grasped her sword. Su Kaolla arrived behind her carrying a sensor. "Keitaro's fantasies, behind this door," Kaolla announced to Motoko.  
  
Motoko sniffed at Kaolla's comment. "How could this place have doors?" From the moment Motoko saw the tablets of self-image and the countless symbols and magazine articles floating about, she knew this place obeyed a set of natural laws very different from ones that the real world adhered to. Motoko could take nothing for granted in this zoo of thoughts and mental images, but surely a door did not make any real sense to have in this mental landscape.  
  
"Well, Motoko, this place doesn't have any real doors, of course."   
  
/Of course,/ Motoko agreed. Once again, Kaolla had found a way to patronize her without even meaning to. It made her angry to have someone talking down to her like her older sister always did.   
  
But Kaolla obviously did not mean to patronize and Motoko choose not hold it against her. "It does have symbols though and doors usually symbolize a willingness to keep people out." Kaolla checked the door over. "Your breaking down the door would symbolize how much force it would take to access his fantasies."   
  
Aoyama Motoko smiled greedily at what Su Kaolla had just said. This door represented his will to keep people out. Why would he want to keep people out unless he had something disgusting and perverted to hide from them? Not realizing how she just reduced the concept of personal privacy to an effort to hide perversion, Motoko immediately rose her sword and commanded her succession technique to fill the blade with Ki energy as it came down on the door. In seconds, Motoko watched in utter disbelief as her blade shattered into a thousand pieces and went flying in every direction. Kaolla had ducked behind Motoko just in the knick of time. Motoko tossed the broken stump of her sword to the ground in complete frustration.   
  
As Kaolla almost spoke out to answer, Motoko signaled with her hand for her to stay quiet. She didn't need Kaolla to tell her what happened. Everything in here stemmed from Keitaro's soul in one way or another and violence had no more effect on this door than it did on Keitaro himself in the real world.   
  
"Well," Motoko thought out loud. "If we can't force it open, how do we get in?" Su Kaolla stared at the surface of the door. While her Ki blast had not toppled the door in one blow like she hoped it would, the hurricane winds produced by the Ki blast did wipe away thick layers of dust from the vaulted door's surface. On the door's dust-free surface, Motoko and Kaolla could now see a keyboard composed of the Japanese alphabet underneath four syllable slots. Kaolla spoke up once again, this time to state the obvious.   
  
"Perhaps, we can enter a code." Motoko sighed. Any idiot could have figured that out, but Kaolla probably wanted to sound important. Everyone inside this machine represented the first people to use her interactive environment. If everything succeeded as planned (meaning everyone survived), this device, this interactive environment as she called it, might have serious market value once she secured the patents for it. Until then, Kaolla could do nothing more than marvel and rant about this living proof of her incredible intellect and ingenuity. As she ranted and marveled, Motoko still had to walk around inside it searching for Keitaro's lost soul and undeniable proof of his perversion.  
  
"You first," Kaolla said, stepping aside for Motoko to approach the keyboard. It surprised Motoko that the computer genius had leave her with the task of cracking the code. Motoko figured that all her accusations against Keitaro made Kaolla think she had superior understanding of his mind and could easily determine the four-syllable code he used to keep his fantasies locked away from prying souls.   
  
As she imagined her worst fears of perversion in Keitaro, she entered in syllables. Ma-e-ha-ra, she typed. Maehara as in Maehara Shinobu. The computer with Keitaro's voice replied. "Access denied." Motoko would not let up. As stupid as he might appear, Keitaro could make the most certain act of perversion look like an accident, so she concluded he would not choose such a blatantly obvious code word. She knew one name that she worried most about finding in his fantasies. A-o-ya-ma. Aoyama. The computer Keitaro voice replied once again, "Access denied."  
  
Motoko thought she might enter in Narusegawa Naru's name, but her name did not fit the slots. Naru only had two syllables and Narusegawa had five. Still, if he had not used her name or Shinobu's name as a password, perhaps, he used Naru's name in a less obvious way. Aoyama Motoko needed to think like Urashima Keitaro, a wildly imaginative man with an obsessive love for someone who can't seem make up her mind about him. Na-ru-na-ru, she typed. Naru, Naru. Motoko could feel a new sword materialize into her grip as the Keitaro voice sounded particularly annoying this time as he repeated his message. "Access denied."  
  
"I think I've got it." She reasoned that even Keitaro had a breaking point like everyone else. Perhaps his sights had strayed away from Naru's hard-to-win love to a more safe and assured victory. That Okinawa girl with that horrible creature for a pet would jump in front of a bullet for her Kei-kun. Of course, Otohime Mutsumi would probably faint from the excitement before she had a chance to act on this selfless bravery. Either way, Motoko could tell she would do anything to protect Keitaro from harm if she didn't have to worry about her anemia getting the best of her. O-to-hi-me, she typed. Otohime.   
  
The Keitaro voice gave his "Access denied" speech again and Motoko started to type in whatever came to mind, desperate to find the password. Three dozen "Access denied" speeches later, she had exhausted every possibility in she could think of. She had even typed in, Su-ka-o-ra. Su Kaolla.   
  
Su Kaolla, apparently tired of her constant failure, leapt onto Motoko's neck and whispered something into her ear. "Not a chance," Motoko replied as she peeled Kaolla off of her and set her on the ground. She actually could believe that Keitaro might have used that word to protect his perverted fantasies, but if he did, Motoko knew what she would have to do to him. Her fingers trembled as she entered it the syllables. She feared what she would have to do if this password worked.  
  
Ya-ku-so-ku. Yakusoku. Promise. The computer voice of Keitaro returned to Motoko and Kaolla. This time it had taken an inviting tone in his voice that Motoko had dreaded hearing. "Please come in. The door will shut behind you. Have a nice day."  
  
Su Kaolla probably wanted to accompany Motoko. Su Kaolla must have hesitated when tears rose in Motoko's eyes. She only wanted to expose Keitaro's perversion and arm the other girls with knowledge. Now, that he had misused a sacred word to protect his fantasies, Motoko knew she could never look at Keitaro the same way again. Like her sister Tsuruko, Keitaro had betrayed his life of purity and strength for a life of obscenity and weakness. He would have to receive the ultimate punishment for his crime; she would force Keitaro to leave the Hinata-sou if either of them survived this. Motoko checked her watch. Twenty minutes left.   
  
Motoko choked back the tears. She could not cry. Every tear she had not stopped, brought shame and disgrace to her school and her family. She needed to stay strong. In seconds, she remembered how to bury her suffering under layers and layers of righteous anger, how to funnel all her fears and sadness into a blind storm of rage.   
  
"You cannot hide from me, Urashima." Motoko charged in. "I will find you. I will find you wherever you hide. I will find you wherever you run to, I will find you ..." A bright light engulfed Motoko and she found her face inches away from a cross.   
  
/... in a church?/ Motoko wondered, cutting herself on the blade of her sword as she grabbed on to the sharp edge as if to keep a grip on reality. /Does Urashima have fantasies about joining the priesthood?/ She released her hand from the sharp edge. She realized that thought seemed awfully naive, but Motoko started to suspect she knew less about Keitaro than she pretended to. If Keitaro could use the promise as a password for his vault of fantasies, perhaps he had no real terribly sick fantasies at all.   
  
It seemed like a hard sale for Motoko at first, but years of asking why Keitaro acted like such a nice guy had never given her the chance to ask the opposite question: Why not? Why couldn't she just accept Keitaro the way he appeared, a nice guy with an accident-prone nature and a good heart? Sure, she had done something like that before with her sister's husband and he turned out to have some serious issues about women, but perhaps Motoko had deceived herself. Perhaps, she had deceived herself in believing she could ever find a comparison between Keitaro and Tsuruko's two-faced husband. Keitaro seemed like a good kid, perhaps part of that small percent of the male population even women like herself could put their faith in.   
  
Motoko started to cry as she witnessed why the fantasy had taken her to a church. She still thought tears brought dishonor and shame to her school and her family, but she could not help it. She always cried at weddings.   
  
As she cried, the voice of priest echoed in her ears. "Speak now or forever hold your peace." Motoko had good cause why they should not wed. Keitaro still needed to graduate from Toudai and so did Naru, but she did not speak this objection. Su Kaolla warned her that mental images like the priest can only interact with her if she spoke to them.   
  
Besides, Motoko still felt guilty from the last time she tried to interrupt a wedding. That time, everyone present had laughed her out of the building and continued the service without her.   
  
Any ways, Keitaro certainly had thought through this fantasy with a feverish degree of detail as she looked up the banner that read, "Toudai Alumni Marriage." Aoyama Motoko also caught sight of the other girls and herself. Motoko and Maehara Shinobu in this fantasy looked like they entered their early twenties. This mostly definitely meant that Keitaro dreamed of passing the Toudai exam on his fourth try, of Naru passing on her second, both of them graduating and marrying two years after graduation. All of this would take roughly seven years if it really happened.   
  
The priest cleared his throat. "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride." As Motoko's tears of joy collected along her half-successful impersonation of smile, Keitaro pulled up the bride's veil and revealed a blushing Narusegawa Naru. As Keitaro and Naru moved in to kiss each other, a bright light erupted from the space between their lips and expanded outward, engulfing the priest and the dream versions of everyone she had ever met since Keitaro had moved into the Hinata-sou.   
  
In moments, the light consumed Motoko and she found herself at the beginning of another one of Keitaro's fantasies. This fantasy had Keitaro serenading Naru with a violin or something like that. Motoko wondered what had happened to the last fantasy.   
  
Moments before Keitaro and Naru got a chance to kiss, the dream just ended and moved on to a new one like nothing happened. To say the least, it made very little sense. Surely even the most non-perverted man on the planet has some fantasies of what to do on the honeymoon.  
  
*****  
  
Su Kaolla hated herself for what she had so thoughtlessly done. Kaolla herself had warned everyone about trying to speak to mental images, especially dangerous-looking ones. And when a Keitaro dressed in black without glasses and a scar over his left eye showed up after Motoko opened the door to his fantasies, she could not contain the urge to say, "Hey, Keitaro, that you?" Able to interact with her now, this Keitaro ran down Kaolla. She tried to run in after Motoko, but the door had shut behind her as the computer promised it would. All the mental resources in the world at her disposal and she still could not grasp simple concepts like "Shut up."  
  
"You just called me Keitaro. People here call me Ken." Kaolla could not take her eyes off of the scar over his left eye. "Explain yourself." Kaolla sweat-dropped at the response and pulled herself free of this Keitaro. Apparently, this version of Keitaro answered to a different name than the original Keitaro did. Kaolla could not think of her next move, but she imagined having her toys with the live ammunitions with her right now. No sooner had Kaolla made this silent wish, the toys with the live ammunitions materialized in her hands.   
  
A glint of fear rose in this shadow Keitaro's eyes, especially the one with the scar over it. "No, you can't. Mental images cannot materialize things outside domains." Kaolla panicked as Ken told her this fact she had already known. According to her theories of psyche display interaction, some of the long-lived mental images can materialize themselves outside their domains and into any domain they pleased, but only a real soul could do what she did. "Where did you come from?"   
  
As the current scoreboard read, Su Kaolla had committed two major mistakes and this Ken character had committed none. She could do nothing to correct the mistake now, she just had to keep this Keitaro reject from getting too close to her. In seconds, she had released every last bit of ammunition inside the toys at Ken.   
  
As she strained her mind to materialize new ammunition, this Ken, uninjured and unmoved by the explosions, leapt at Kaolla, grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulders. Keitaro leveled one of Kaolla's toy with the live ammunition to Kaolla. "You probably know this already, Kaolla," this Keitaro replied nonchalantly, leveling the toy gun to Kaolla's neck. "I can neither kill you nor permanently injure you in any way in this place. But I can hurt you and unless you want to know what having your head blown off feels like, I suggest you tell me where you came from."   
  
Kaolla would never tell this Keitaro clone anything. No amount of pain inflicted on her could bring Kaolla to talk. But Ken had already figured that out. "If your own personal pain will not motivate you to tell me where you came from, I will harm the real Keitaro. I have him imprisoned in the deepest darkest regions of his fears and if you don't speak, I will hurt him."   
  
/Fears,/ Su Kaolla thought as she heard this Keitaro clone refer to the real Keitaro. In all the rush, no one had ever thought to search for him in his fears. But, then again, they probably all knew they would have to search there eventually, they just wanted to search the easier places to prepare themselves for the voyage into Keitaro's fears.  
  
Lost in her own introspection at the possibility of this grotesque oversight, Keitaro must have taken her silence as resistance. "Okay, I guess you don't care what misery befalls Keitaro either. Perhaps, you think Keitaro can handle anything and gladly suffer for you. Well, I can't give you pain or the threat of pain against others to force the truth out of you. I doubt I can give you anything to make you tell me the truth. But I do know one thing I can take away from you. Do you have any idea what?"   
  
Kaolla nodded her head. Besides pain towards herself and others, Ken had few moves available to him. He already made the fatal error of revealing something Kaolla did not know. In her theories, she had not reached a decision about whether attack from a mental image could harm the physical body in some way or not. Ken, like herself, had a shared inability to keep quiet about critical issues and that weakness would help. For once, she felt like she had power over this loathsome Ken character and then he told her something that proved everything Motoko had believed in.  
  
"Your innocence, Su Kaolla," Ken answered, bringing out a wicked smile on his face as Kaolla's eyes widened in panic. "I could tell someone close to you brought you here to help her get inside his fantasy vault and find his dark perverted dreams." Ken smiled. "You wouldn't find them there. He keeps his clean well-washed glorified fantasies in that vault and protects it with a ridiculously obvious password. I keep the goods in a personal library of mine somewhere else. Can you guess where we keep them?"  
  
Su Kaolla finally started to think like Keitaro. Living alongside dangerous and violent women all this time who accuse him of every act of perversion known to man, Keitaro had surely developed a justified fear of discovery when it comes to perverted fantasies. "His fears," Kaolla replied. "He keeps them in his fears."  
  
Ken's curling smile doubled in size as Kaolla gave her answer. "Your genius has finally served you well. Yes, he keeps his dirty little secrets in his fears. He has had quite a few fantasies about you, Kaolla. I guess Keitaro always liked exotic women. But then again, he has quite a few fantasies about all the girls he lives with, all just as bad." Ken paused as Kaolla tried to hide her tears from him. "Afraid, Kaolla? I don't blame you. Half the stuff in my library could cause his own grandmother to keel over."   
  
  
Kaolla choked down sobs. "No, not afraid, I just don't understand." In these short seconds, Kaolla felt herself growing ancient and sad, the perpetual smile on her face chipped away by the shattering of a delusion. At this moment, Kaolla prayed she would have the strength to smile again someday. "Keitaro treats everyone of us with respect and acts like such a nice guy. Has he lied to us all this time?"  
  
Ken set Kaolla down and looked her in the eyes. "Don't cry, Kaolla. Try to smile. Keitaro has not lied to you. He respects all of you." Then the appearance of sensitivity vanished as quickly as it had came, turning into one of stern seriousness. "Kaolla, do you know much about metaphysics?"   
  
Kaolla nodded. Of all her topics of intellectual pursuit, Kaolla knew little about the hows and why fors of existence. Thankfully, the continuously talkative Ken would gladly explain. "Well, neither do I. But as a kid, I heard a wise man once say 'that everything in nature contained its opposite.' In fact, that opposite inside everyone grows the more they fight against it. Your Keitaro did everything he could to fight against me. Thanks to his stubborn nature, I now have the power of a god." Ken stood up triumphantly, his trench coat lifting him into the air and allowed him to fly around like a bird before setting himself down behind Kaolla.   
  
"He would never mistreat any of you." Kaolla turned to face him. "No, but he would mistreat us." A flash of mixed feelings entered Ken's eyes, a soup of anger, pain and sadness. "He spent his whole life mistreating me. He pushed me away, ignored me, crushed me under the weight of his ideas and morals, blamed all the bad things he did on me and never gave me a chance to prove myself to him."   
  
Tears erupted from Ken's eyes as his voice started to quiver. "But, it doesn't matter." Ken wiped away his tears. "I separated myself from him. It cost me my soul, but I did it. I control him now, not the other way around. He has one last battle to fight against me. And when he defeats me, I will have enough power to destroy him."  
  
Ken focused on Su Kaolla. Even his dark side ran deeper than anyone had originally fathomed. Kaolla's thought roamed back to her native country, back to stories about trouble-making spirits like the mononoke of Japan. Whenever something went wrong, the villagers would blame this mononoke rather than take responsibility for what happened.   
  
Apparently, Keitaro had long since assigned the blame of his failures to control his own perverted thoughts to a part of himself he considered the Other, the mononoke within. But like the mononoke, no one ever cared how the creature reacted to their bad reputation, because no one considered them human enough to care about. This sad unfortunate fate had befell the all-too-human Ken and would risk killing Keitaro and ultimately himself for a chance to earn his acceptance.   
  
No, Kaolla had tried to grow up fast before and she did not like what she had experienced as an adult. Whatever Keitaro had imagined about her, Kaolla knew better than to make him feel guilty about it, but she could not ignore the effects it would have on her. If she saw herself and Keitaro joined in a such a fashion, she would grow up too fast and she did not want that. Kaolla took a deep breath. "Where should I begin?"  
  
Ken smiled. "At the beginning, of course."  
  
  
  
  
  
TO BE CONTINUED ... 


	3. D I D

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Save Keitaro  
D.I.D.  
  
  
  
To Urashima Keitaro's utter surprise, a small and discreet switchblade appeared in his hand. Like an early Christmas present, Keitaro savored the touch of cold steel before slipping it into his pocket. As usual, Ken regained his control over Keitaro and forced him to his notepad again, his hands destined to make obscene observations on paper in excruciating detail. Every time Ken's power slipped, he wrote down other one of his symptoms. By now, Keitaro accepted his sentence with polite resignation. Now, he had something to work with, something to plan his escape with. From one moment, he had gone from utter hopelessness to the brink of incredible confidence. He wrote that down in the notepad. [Mood swings].  
  
/Do your worst, Naru,/ As Ken turned to leave the nightmare version of Naru and visit the other domains, Keitaro pawed the switchblade. /Because, now you will play by my rules./   
  
"Oh, before I leave," Ken turned around and looked at Keitaro. "[Give me the pencil.]" Denied a will of his own, Keitaro mindlessly handed Ken the pencil. Ken winced in pain as something like static electricity flew through the pencil and connected with him. Keitaro could feel it too, but torture had numbed this lesser sensation of pain a great deal. "Just in case you get any enterprising ideas." His swagger had returned to his step. As Ken left the room, Keitaro released the blade and slipped it back into his pocket.   
  
The sound of the switchblade opening caught the nightmare's attention. Keitaro's blood pressure peaked as his eyes met the gaze of the inhuman nightmare Naru. For a fraction of second, he feared that Naru had grown suspicious of him. If she felt even the slightest cause for suspicion, Naru could press her hand against his forehead and open out his subconscious mind and review any major decisions he had made in the last twenty minutes. Surely, him causing a switchblade to appear would end up on the top of that short list of things he had done of his free own will in the last twenty minutes.   
  
Fortunately, Naru had most definitely interpreted the vaguely heard sound as some kind of whimper Keitaro had generated and saw no real reason to waste time plunging into the subconscious for answers. In painfully obvious pride in herself, this Naru must have patted herself on the back for bestowing so much fear on Keitaro through torture.   
  
Frankly, Keitaro no longer feared pain, the human heart and mind when brought together could handle impossible amounts of physical pain and suffering. But his mental defenses hovered over critical mass. If the Nightmare Naru tricked him into one more debate about Narusegawa's questionable moral values, Keitaro knew he would certainly snap under the pressure and renounce his faith in Narusegawa. Then, Narusegawa Naru would never know the full depth of his love for her.   
  
/No, not Narusegawa,/ Keitaro told himself mentally. /I can't let that happen. I must free myself from this prison./ Naru winded up a punch, Keitaro's left hand dove in after the opened switchblade.   
  
"So, where did we leave off? Oh, yes, punching you into a bloody pulp." Naru materialized a pair of spiked gloves and a stuffed sock. Naru carefully wrapped her hands in the gloves and straightened out the brass knuckles attached to the gloves with surgical care and preparation. Naru shoved the sock in Keitaro's mouth. "You might want to bite down on that. I plan to make this one hurt." As Naru's punch moved through the air between herself and his face, Keitaro lunged the switchblade at Naru and ducked the path of the punch.   
  
Keitaro threw his hands out of the way as the blade impacted against the surface of Naru's neck, jamming the full length of the blade into her throat. A look of exquisite pain emerging over Naru's face told him that he had made the correct assumption. He could not kill a mental image, major injury could definitely slow them down for awhile. Feeling a few quarts of adrendaline pulse through his, Keitaro reached for the blade that he had impaled through Naru and twisted it out of out her throat sideways. That move left an ugly gash along her throat that released blood from it the way a fountain released water. At the verge of fainting from the sight of blood, Keitaro flinched as he felt the cold steel penetrate the soft membrane of Naru's left eye and burrow into her brain.  
  
Too afraid to remove the blade, Keitaro bolted away leaving it buried in Naru's skull. As he ran, he spit the sock out of his mouth. He opened his notepad, made a pencil out of air and wrote down other symptom. [Tendency toward violence].   
  
The nightmare tore the blade from her eye and launched it at Keitaro. With a burst of inspiration, Keitaro thought of having his armor with him as the blade connected with his shoulder. In seconds, the knife had bounced off a plate of armor that appeared above his his shoulder.   
  
/Anything I wish for,/ Keitaro realized as he remember that he had wished for a switchblade so he could force an escape from this pit of all his fears, real and imagined. After he made the wish, it had finally showed up in his hands and gave his plans a new direction. Sure, the new direction meant causing unimaginable bloodshed, but Keitaro needed to escape this place with his love for Narusegawa intact. He could not risk losing that valuable piece of emotional luggage.   
  
Now dressed in head-to-toe in body armour, Keitaro summoned swords and preceeded to improvise a couple sword techniques from things he had seen Aoyama Motoko do. Few of his fears had any experience with swords, because Keitaro did not fear swords like normal people. In the real world, a sword meant nothing more to him than the blunt end of a brittle branch. Only one had any skill, a nightmare version of his own aunt Haruka. As she attacked Keitaro with effortless fluidity, tears streamed down her eyes. "Please, Keitaro, stop it. I don't want to hurt you." In his moment of hesitation, Haruka slashed through his armour, tearing up his right arm. Before he had entered this bleak homeworld of all his nightmares, nothing had ever broken skin on Keitaro.   
  
Keitaro hated this place for tearing open his skin as well as his heart. As he reached the edge of the domain, he started tossing bits and pieces of his body armour at the other nightmares. He had a couple bottles of sake materialized out of nowhere and started breaking them against the floor of the dimly lit cooridors.   
  
As a pair of match materialized in Keitaro's hands, he lit a single match and satisfied himself by watching the look of fear emerge on the faces of the former conveyors of fear. In swift and graceful hand movements, Keitaro pressed the match against the matchbox and let it all fall from his hand, sparking the fire. He stared in perverse pleasure as the flames consumed the nightmares in a fiery inferno. Keitaro slowly back out of the domain, watching them coil in agony. Bright light engulfed Keitaro and carried him out of the domain.   
  
Sure, they will definitely come back and seek revenge for his attack, but Keitaro did not care so much anymore. Deep inside him, he knew his nightmares would never enjoy the level of control they had over him before. The surge of adrendaline made Keitaro jumpy. Realizing he had used one of the sake bottles to wet down the nightmare cooridors, Keitaro almost decided to open the bottle and take a drink. But before he could open the bottle in his hands, Keitaro realized that the blood from Nightmare Naru had stained his clothing, allowing them to cross the barrier. As the Nightmare Naru caught fire, so did the blood embedded in his clothing. In seconds, the fire had spread to every inch of his clothes.   
  
On impulse, Keitaro tore off all his clothes and started trying to extinguish the flames with his feet. In the preternaturally fast fire, his clothes had transformed into ashes except the notepad. Apparently, these the great and powerful Ken had materialized it, it had his attributes of invulnerability. Keitaro did not worry about his apparent lack of clothes. As with the switchblade, the matches, the sword, and the body armour, Keitaro could just summon more clothing.   
  
"Clothes," Keitaro announced holding out his hands, expecting a tuxedo and fresh pair of underwear and socks to materialize out of nowhere. Nothing happened. "Clothes." This time he wished for normal clothes back, nothing fancy. Still nothing happened. "Towel." Again, nothing happened. As Keitaro stood out there feeling annoyed and a bit ripped off, he realized his possible mistake. "Oh, well, I guess I can't make things show up outside the domain." In his logic, it made even sense. None of the other nightmares could do that. Not even Ken himself to make things appear outside the domains, so why should he? Still, Keitaro did not like his current state of affairs.   
  
Keitaro reached what he considered a safe distance. He checked himself over. His right arm had regenerated to perfect condition. As he now turned his attention to his surroundings, he looked up to see the tablets of self-image. From here, he knew where to find his hopes and ambitions. Right now, after hours of torture, Keitaro felt he deserved a remainder what he had endured all that torture for.   
  
Keitaro stood up and walked to his hopes and dreams. Set up to look like the Hinata-sou supported on a cloud, Keitaro felt warm thoughts wrap his nude body seeing his home again. Once inside the domain of hopes, Keitaro could make things show up again. A jolt of energy surged through his body as he arrived inside the domain. As he returned to the sanctity of this pleasant domain, he had made a neatly folded pile of clothes appear in one hand, securing the bottle of sake and the notepad in the other.   
  
"Hey, Keitaro, thanks for the sake, but I can make my own, thank you." Keitaro looked up and saw Kitsune standing inches from his face. "And other thing, you better put your clothes back on quick. I might make your girlfriend jealous." She just appeared out of nowhere. Kitsune kept staring at Keitaro. Keitaro nodded. It probably looked a lot different from second-hand reports then it did in person. Either way, Keitaro recognized the path of Kitsune's eyes and guarded that part of his body from prying eyes with the notepad. Thank god, the fire had not burned this.   
  
Another voice came out of nowhere. "Keitaro, don't listen to her." The voice then spoke to Kitsune. "Kitsune, don't you dare call me his girlfriend again." The voice returned to him. "And Keitaro, if I see you naked in the same room with Kitsune, I will have to kill you."   
  
Keitaro slammed the sake bottle against the floor, causing it to split open. As Kitsune struggled to collected the spilled sake off the room, the words of Nightmare Naru entered his mind. /How well do I know her?/   
  
Keitaro sniffed angrily as he hurriedly dressed himself. "Even in my hopes, Naru treats me like a nobody." Kitsune shot a death stare at Keitaro. As her best friend, she automatically resented any foul comments directed at Naru, even the true ones.   
  
"What, Kitsune? Have I lied? Do you know what I have endured for the last twenty minutes." Kitsune nodded. How could a mental image possibly know these things? "Torture. I spent that time receiving torture from a monster who wore Naru's face like a mask. It said horrible things about her and I said the exact opposite every step of the way, but I can't do that any longer. That girl, that Naru needs some serious therapy." Keitaro paused as tears started to stream down his cheek. "And perhaps so do I, because I love her in spite her endless supply of beatings. But if she can't figure how she feels about me, I guess I should just admit defeat and move on." Keitaro turned and spoke into the wall where Naru's voice came from. "You hear that, Naru, I love you, and I admit defeat. You have won. I guess I should leave then."   
  
Urashima Keitaro had finally grown up. He still loved Narusegawa, but he realized that no relationship could ever bloom between them as long as she visited his every kind gesture and honest mistake with hurricane-kicks and super-punches. No, what he had said both horrified and moved Kitsune to tears, but he meant every word of it. Inner child had found an opportunity to grow up and he had taken it.   
  
Of course, he only confessed his feelings to a bunch of mental images. As soon as he entered the free-fall meditation again, Keitaro would return to his physical body and tell the real Narusegawa how he felt. Yeah, some things, like the promise, needed patience and determination to succeed in. But, no amount of idle time would shake Naru's insatiable need to punish him for his every misdeed. As Nightmare Naru taught him, the things he feared would just keep pushing him until he pushed back. This time, he would push back and accept the responsibility for whatever happened because of it. Keitaro entered the free-fall meditation pose and prepared to return home.   
  
*****  
  
Narusegawa Naru hated crying as much as she pretending to hate Keitaro, but she could not help doing either now. Besides, she liked playing this game of romantic hide-and-seek, hoping and knowing that the compassionate and unyielding Keitaro would find her soft side underneath this paper-thin shell of violence and insults. If she would believe this mental image Keitaro as indication of what the real Keitaro felt, the real Keitaro had just ended the game. If her soft side did not come out of her hiding place soon, he would call it quits and move on with his life. After all the rejection, Keitaro had reached her level of maturity in dealing with these feelings and she hated him for it.  
  
Swallowing her pride and wiping away these tears, Narusegawa Naru stepped into the room and found a fully-dressed Keitaro sitting a full lotus position and a panicked Kitsune trying to gather spilled sake off the floor. "Keitaro." Keitaro turned around.   
  
"Kitsune, could you excuse us?" Kitsune gathered the broken pieces of the sake bottle and carried them away like body bags. Even when she had the ability to make as much sake as she wanted, the sight of a broken sake bottle unhinged poor Kitsune.   
  
As Kitsune left the room, Narusegawa sat down on the couch. Naru took a deep breath. "Did you really mean that, what you said?"  
  
Keitaro laughed. Hearing any Keitaro laugh again after seeing his cold breathless body brought a smile to Naru's face. "No. That comment about serious therapy stuff I said out of spite, I didn't mean it, Naru."  
  
Naru could safely establish that she had spoken to a pretty accurate portrayal of Keitaro. No mental image of Keitaro beforehand had a skull this thick. "No, idiot. I meant the other thing. Did you mean the other thing about loving me?"  
  
Keitaro turned his head and looked Naru in the eyes. He did not have his glasses on and Naru always said he looked cute without his glasses. She still meant it. From the look in Keitaro's eyes, he just remembered the other thing. "Oh yeah, I meant that, Naru. Every time, that nightmare image of you gave me a point I could not argue against, I just told her I loved you and she stopped arguing ... and continued torturing me."  
  
Narusegawa Naru could comprehend everything she had just heard, but it hurt to think that Keitaro had a nightmare image of herself buried somewhere in his mind. A lot of things hurt when stop to recognize the pain. Naru had nothing better to do, but feel the pain. She had watched earlier a hope where Keitaro had confessed his feelings to her and she had confessed her feelings to him.   
  
Just as Naru had a chance to witness Keitaro kiss her for once, suddenly a bright light swallowed up the scene and forced her out of the room. She felt cheated. If she had to recreate with this mental image of Keitaro that scene's intended ending, she would do it. What did she have to lose? When she returned to the real world, she could go back to pretending to hate him. What did she have to lose except a great deal of undue tension?   
  
"I want to play a game with you." Naru stood up and paced a circle around Keitaro. As expected, Keitaro's nose started to bleed. "No, not that kind of game, idiot. I give you a what-if question and you have to tell me honestly what you would do?" Keitaro nodded. "If, hypothetically, I told you I loved you as much as you loved me," Naru needed a moment to regain her breath, "what would you do?"  
  
"Naru, I would probably start dancing around like an idiot, shouting at the top of my lungs that you loved me," Keitaro looked at Naru. Suddenly, the sun quickly retreated below the horizon line and night fell on this Hinata-sou sitting on a cloud. According to her watch, they had fifteen minutes left to save the real Keitaro and Su Kaolla expected them to return with ten minutes left. "Then we would enjoy an awkward silence and we might get carried away and it might lead to something like this."   
  
Keitaro flipped open the notepad in his hand. Naru's eyes bulged out of their sockets as he looked at what he had written. She snatched the notepad from his hands and read it through, making sure her eyes had not deceived her. "Would you actually consider doing any of this with me?" Naru asked, making sure Keitaro caught the skeptical tone in her voice. Naru did not know any of part of Keitaro that had this kind of daring.  
  
Keitaro nodded solemnly. "Some part of me would. Some part of me would consider doing that and much more with you." Keitaro turned his face away from Naru, as if he said something he felt truly guilty about. "You must think of me as a real pervert, now."   
  
"No, I don't, but what do you mean some part of you would?" Naru hated cryptic answers. No one can assign certain responsibilities to a part of themselves and then assigned the rest to another part. She felt unconfortable holding Keitaro's mental images to a double standard, but she understood better why she had brought pain and suffering to Keitaro's life. This duality really left people feeling alienated and worthless.   
  
Naru got sight of something else on the notepad. "Wait a minute." He had some other stuff written in the margins. " 'Depression, suicidal tendencies, insomnia, night terrors, sleep-walking, panic attacks, alcohol and drug abuse, headaches, amnesias, time loss, trances, and 'out of body experiences,' mood swings, tendencies toward violence.' What does all this mean?"   
  
"A list of symptoms, Naru. I can see it now." Keitaro spread out his hands as if he to reveal an imaginary poster in front of him. " 'Manager of Hinata-sou has finally lost his mind.' 'Manager finally took a dive off the deep end.' 'Manager takes a mental vacation from the real world.' I can still hear her crying in my nightmares. Haruka broke down into tears when Ken took over my body. I had never seen Haruka cry before. It scared me. I made Haruka cry. Me, Urashima Keitaro, made my strong poker face aunt, Urashima Haruka, cry a river of tears."   
  
A chill ran down Naru's spine. Thanks to her mother's obsessive fear of mental diseases and disorders, Naru knew an unusual amount of psychology trivia. His symptoms and descriptions of someone else taking over his body bore an unsettling resemblance to D.I.D, Dissociative Identity Disorder. The psychology community had renamed that after it found the term Multiple Personality Disorder misleading.   
  
People diagnosed with this disorder needed years of extensive therapy to get over it. Naru could tell that Keitaro did not have years to reach the bottom of this well of mental tribulation. He needed answers and fast. So he must have thought of the meditation practices of Aoyama Motoko and must have figured that only this free-fall meditation had enough power to condense years of therapy into a single night. Naru blushed at how much Keitaro's love for her must have fought against his deteoriating mental state. People with Dissociative Identity Disorder usually lash out at the person who caused them the most pain and suffering, namely herself. She also continued to blush as she realized the truth. She had just confessed her feelings to the real Keitaro, not merely a mental image created by Keitaro, but the real person, Urashima Keitaro.  
  
Keitaro sat in meditation and looked back up at Naru. "I can't do it." Naru's heart sank the moment he spoke those words. The free-fall meditation had brought him into this place and only through the free-fall meditation could Keitaro or anyone here leave this place. If Keitaro could not use the meditation, no one would leave and everyone here would die.   
  
*****  
  
Thirteen minutes left. Maehara Shinobu and Su Kaolla sat in chains as Ken grimaced at the fire damage the "nightmare cooridors" as he called them, had sustained. Ken had walked into the conscience domain where Kaolla said she would find threatened to harm Keitaro and she could not help but cry out, "Don't hurt, Sempai, please." In seconds, Ken pounched on her and carried her out of the pearly white hallways of the conscience into the dismal cooridors to this horrible nightmare realm.   
  
Shinobu left no malice for what Kaolla had done. If something had threatened to do that, Shinobu would have told them anything they wanted to hear. As much as she loved Sempai, she did not consider herself ready to do anything reserved for two consenting adults in complete privacy. Maehara Shinobu needed time to grow up and possibly get over Keitaro someday.  
  
"I will make Keitaro suffer for this, but for right now, I have a treat for you, Shinobu." Ken reached into a box and pulled out a horrible animal. Its cockroach legs and long hard-shelled tail whipped back and forth. Its manta-ray-shaped upper body quivered in protest from having someone peel him away from his home.   
  
"Once, this thing latches onto you, you will experience your precious Sempai in ways you only imagined." Shinobu blushed at what he said. For a moment, he worried that this Ken had some form of telepathy, but Shinobu suppressed that thought for good cause. If he had telepathy, he could have read the information out of Kaolla's mind, instead having to blackmail it out of her with that horrendous threat. Still, that comment felt like something torn straight from the pages of her mind.   
  
"Now, for Kaolla, this meant torture, but for you, you might find this quite pleasurable." No, she would not. Keitaro belonged to Naru and vice versa. She could not in good conscience experience that with Keitaro. Still Ken did not listen. In seconds, the creature latched onto the back of her head. Shinobu found herself in a room with her Sempai, saying things she wanted to say to Keitaro all this time and having him reply in ways she always hoped she would hear. She could see the world with a newfound beauty and grace.   
  
It almost felt like her own fantasy until things turned ugly. A bright flash of light escaped between their lips and filled the room. A glint of lust shone in her Sempai and she could not stop her own body from embracing his. Tears streamed from her eyes as she navigated every inch of her Sempai, doing the unthinkable and unforgivable onto him and having the unthinkable and unforgivable done onto her. She felt sick and ready to vomit, but her body would not participate in her disgust. Blood leaked from her mouth as her teeth tore her tongue to ribbons. "Please stop this." She finally managed to say as the dream Keitaro prepared to bring a stirring conclusion to this parade of obscenities. A look of fear and begging for forgiveness came over the dream Keitaro's face. Shinobu knew only one answer she could give his request. "No, Keitaro, I can never forgive you."  
  
  
  
  
  
TO BE CONTINUED ... 


	4. Near Death

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Save Keitaro  
Near Death  
  
  
  
Otohime Mutsumi needed to summon her strength to rescue Maehara Shinobu. Now it seemed like she needed to rescue Su Kaolla. Fortunately she had that strength. Here, when the beasts of this dark frightful place overwhelmed. Ever since she had arrived to this dangerous realm of her Kei-kun's inner thoughts and feelings, Mutsumi had left her anemia-ridden body in the real world. Plus, she went for help and Aoyama Motoko seemed to have renewed interest in saving Keitaro, apparently from himself.   
  
As the Keitaro entity glared intensely into his surroundings, Mutsumi screamed as she caught an eyeful of a scar that ran down from his left eye. This Keitaro, who introduced himself as Ken, felt like her Kei-kun, but radically different, like an aspect of her Kei-kun that he kept hidden away from everyone. Mutsumi could feel the presence of Keitaro's soul in him, but not enough for him to ascend the limitations of a mental image. Mutsumi had screamed her heart out when she caught a glance at Ken's scar and he had not noticed.   
  
Because she had refused to speak directly to him, he could not recognize her presence in any way. Mutsumi even threw herself on top of Ken, he yanked her off of him with startling ease and continued on his way like nothing happened.   
  
When she had jumped Ken, Maehara Shinobu smiled reassuringly at Mutsumi. According to the look on her face, she told Mutsumi that she did not fear Ken. Even with the scar, black clothes and flying trench coat, Shinobu had clearly seen her Sempai beneath it all and she believed that he could do never harm her in any way. Mutsumi hoped that fate would reward Shinobu's faith in Kei-kun with peace of mind. She could only hope.   
  
Frightened beyond words, she knew that she could stage a rescue by herself, she needed heavy artillery. Mutsumi tried to materialize dangerous weapons, but she did not the heart for violence and her weapons always came out quite breakable and often useless. She must find someone adept at forming dangerous weaponry and at the moment she thought about Su Kaolla. She had searched the front of the fantasy vault and found Motoko flying out of the vault, landing in a heap in front of her.   
  
Mutsumi rubbed her eyes as she squinted at Motoko. Had her imagination gotten the best of her or did it look like the solid and emotionless kendo warrior had spent a long time crying? Mutsumi could swear she could see the characteristic redness around her eyes and trails that reminded her of dried tears. Mutsumi shook off all real or imagined observations except one. She had noticed the sword in Motoko's hand. Mutsumi found someone capable of generating dangerous weapons.   
  
Mutsumi gave Motoko's the edited version of what happened to Shinobu, especially the part about the Keitaro lookalike kidnapping Shinobu. Motoko's reaction surprised her. To Mutsumi, it seemed like Motoko had trouble believing that anyone with Keitaro's face would harm Shinobu. Mutsumi had trouble believing it herself, but Motoko used to pounce on Keitaro every time she found those two alone. Now, she visibly resented the idea of Keitaro doing anything to harm Shinobu.   
  
/What happened to you?/ Keitaro's fantasies must have left one fine impression of him on Motoko to make her opinions do this complete and unnatural turnabout. Mutsumi smiled and looked up to the heavens. /I guess miracles do happen./ Mutsumi hoped that miracles. did not take much time off between happenings, because right now, she needed another miracle in less than a couple minutes.  
  
Otohime Mutsumi and Aoyama Motoko marched into battle, following the trail of tears that Shinobu had dotted the ground with. In the distance, Mutsumi could find the self image tablets in the distance. Fifteen minutes or bust. In five minutes, everyone of the girls promised to meet back at the self image tablets. Mutsumi could not have seen of them. This meant either they found Keitaro and had not left for the tablets or that no one had found Keitaro and they still needed those five minutes to search under every proverbial stone for their beloved manager.   
  
A bright light engulfed Mutsumi and Motoko and allowed her passage from the place where Shinobu's tears had ended. Inside Mutsumi noticed the careful mixture of an office building patched with cave-like fungi and stalactites clinging to the ceiling. It gloated all the appeal of a cave merged with the soulless and dimly lit insides of an office building seared by fire. The moment she stepped inside this place, her idea of Hell had grown that much less abstract and took the shape and dimensions of this wicked realm. Surely, this place embodied the less obedient parts of Kei-kun.   
  
Creatures of impossible shapes and sizes marched past Mutsumi and Motoko. Some of the creatures resembled girls from the Hinata-sou. Some had started trying to rebuilt things destroyed by some kind of fire. Even the less rushed and focused of these creatures had not noticed their presence. Mutsumi could feel her a twinge of fear rise inside her as she saw one of Kaolla's machine turtles fly after her. This creature had noticed them. As the turtle froze Motoko's ability to move her hands, Mutsumi leapt up at the mecha Tama-chan and tackled it to the ground. Having her strength back like she did as a child made her feel wonderful. She never realized how much she missed out in because of her medical condition.  
  
On the display screen, the turtle had something written down. [To anyone who receives this: with the materialization powers of this realm, I created and installed a soul radar on this mecha. It can sense the presence of souls in various degrees. Please read and recite discoveries and possible solutions produced by this unit.] The screen changed [Discovery made by mecha: Ken has precisely half of a soul. Possible solution introduced by mecha: ...]   
  
A creature had spotted the suspicious-looking turtle and slashed it in half. Motoko looked up, apparently her look of relief from seeing the turtle destroyed replaced instantly by one of fear as she saw Haruka-san armed with a sword. Still possibly in recovery from seeing a turtle, Mutsumi worried that Motoko might not have had the strength take on this sword-wielding Haruka clone. Fortunately, Motoko would never have to find out.   
  
Mutsumi rushed up the two broken halves and held them together. No use, Haruka's blade must have torn its computer to bits. No, she needed to rejoin the two pieces of this mecha, only then would it work. A surge of adrenaline entered Mutsumi's originally fragile heart as the possible solution introduced by the mecha entered her mind.   
  
Before she had a chance to tell Motoko, she had raced ahead and found Kaolla and Shinobu. Both bound to chains, Shinobu had some ugly crustacean clung to the back of her head. Of course, Mutsumi loved all animals in a detached sort of way, but something about the pincers and hard shell of those particular creatures sent a stab of fear through Mutsumi's heart. She did not want to call it fear, but she had trouble dealing with crabs and crustaceans in any way besides eating their dead well-cooked innards. Forced away from others by the anathema of that crustacean creature, Mutsumi would tell them the secret as soon as she built up the courage to approach them. Until then, she reveled in pride of her quick thinking.   
  
*****  
  
After she finally destroyed the chains around them with Ki blasts. Motoko employed the same Ki blasts in an effort to expel the crustacean-like monster clung to Shinobu's skulls, but the harder she attacked it, the more it strengthened its grip on Shinobu. One more attack and its pinchers would touch each other in Shinobu's head. Motoko could not risk Shinobu experiencing that kind of horrible pain. Plus, the crustaceans did not seem to harm Shinobu. She could clearly see a smile on her face, so perhaps, this creature did not intend to harm her.   
  
As Mutsumi waited in the distance for some inane reason, Motoko charged after her carrying Shinobu and Kaolla away from the site of their imprisonment. Aoyama looked over with renewed relief to see the worthless halves of that frightful turtle mecha dismembered. Motoko did not know much about machines, but from common sense, she knew two dismembered halves of anything could not function properly. Resolved in this bit of thinking, Motoko ran up to Mutsumi.   
  
"Hey, turtle girl, I think we have trouble." Ken emerged from a room and saw what probably appeared to him like two girls carried away by an invisible force. In seconds, Ken materialized a full suit of armor with swords and took to the air, chasing down the two girls. Kaolla formed an army of those horrible mechas to attack Ken. Having a warrior's inability to deny anyone or anything a fight, this Ken choose to slow down and fight the turtles one by one. In a twisted sort of way, Motoko respected Ken's will to fight, but she could not allow him to win his battle against Keitaro. Keitaro deserved to win, Ken did not.   
  
As all of them leapt through the barrier of the domain, Motoko then noticed how Shinobu's facial features had twisted into one of pain and disgust. The crustacean had harmed Shinobu in a way that far exceeded physical torture. Motoko had seen how numerous creatures, both man and demon, react to physical torture. No, this looked a lot worse. It looked like something inside the crustacean had literally torn Shinobu to shreds, mind, body, and spirit, pushed her to the brink.   
  
*****  
  
Urashima Keitaro felt Narusegawa and Kitsune dragging him to the tablets of self-image. His attempts to enter the free-fall meditation had failed and had pummeled him into a state of living death. From his motionless eyes, Keitaro witnessed the stone of the tablets start to crumble and darkness consume the mental landscape, until all the light retreated into a single point in the distance. A chill blanketed every inch of his body. Naru had materialized furs for him to keep himself warm. Urashima Keitaro knew what had befallen this place.   
  
NDE. From everything he heard, he had ten minutes of life still inside him and the body started to feel the icy chill of impending death. According to what Kaolla had told them, none of the girls would survive this if he experience what happened after the Near Death Experience.   
  
Keitaro smiled as he thought about Su Kaolla. In all his rush to find a cure for Ken, he never once thought to turn to Kaolla for help. Perhaps, he worried that the young child would not understand his problem if he told her. In Motoko, he had confidence that Motoko would better understand his dilemma if he had told her. Of course, ultimately, he had told neither of them so Keitaro decided he deemed Motoko's meditations more apt to handle mental troubles. He deemed wrong, but his long list of symptoms had driven his ability to think to its breaking point. He made the decision that felt right at the time.  
  
As Keitaro's thinking of Kaolla must have summoned her, because in the distance, Keitaro could hear Kaolla calling to him. He looked to see Kaolla. Another voice called out to him. In seconds, Otohime Mutsumi materialized next to her. A third, more weary and exhausted than Mutsumi, spoke to him and suddenly he found Motoko standing inches from him, holding something he could not see up to his face. "Could you explain this?" The characteristic malice had drained from her voice. She simply wanted an explanation for what happened, not really determined to harm Keitaro for a wrong answer as she usually would and usually did.  
  
Keitaro gazed at nothing and tried to pretend he saw what Motoko saw by matching the look on her face. "What do you want to know?" Keitaro felt his stomach ready to turn inside up and spill his guts. Naru and Kitsune said that Shinobu had crossed over into his mind too. Where did Shinobu go?  
  
Motoko rose the invisible heap in her hand to Keitaro's eye level, expecting Keitaro to get a better look as something he could not see. "Ken did something to Shinobu and now she will not wake up from kind of nightmare. What happened to her?" The lump in Keitaro's throat had rose to the roof of his mouth. The next questions scared Keitaro. He had a fairly good idea what Ken had done to her, but he did not want to. believe it. Even Ken must have some kind of a soul.   
  
"Does Shinobu have something latched to her head?" Motoko nodded. He continued to the next question, even more afraid to ask the next question that the last. "Did it have pinchers and a long tail?" This time, both Motoko and Mutsumi nodded, Mutsumi a little more vehemently than Motoko. Tears rose in Keitaro's eyes. The cold crystallized the tears and caused them to cling to his face. "Monster, how could he do this to her? She can't handle it, she should not have to."  
  
As Keitaro tried to caress the invisible heap, a voice shouted, "Keitaro, don't touch me." In seconds, the heap rematerialized into Maehara Shinobu and slapped Keitaro's hand away. "Please, for the love of God, don't touch me." As the crustacean scurried away, Shinobu ran to Narusegawa and hid herself from Keitaro behind. Shinobu looked up at Narusegawa as if begging for forgiveness. "Sorry, Narusegawa, I did not mean. I could not help myself."   
  
Spurned from the one girl of them who supported him through all his failings, Keitaro dove against the tablets of self-image, burying in his face in the negative list. The girls gathered around. He could felt Narusegawa Naru grabbed hold of his hand, but he yanked it away.   
  
"Don't touch me, Narusegawa. You don't know me. I do." Keitaro pointed up at tablet. He turned around to make sure he pointed at the right word. He had. [Perverted]. "Ken had subjected her to one of my fantasies. I never meant for Shinobu to see that, but Ken showed it to her anyway."   
  
Keitaro wiped away the icicles of frozen tears to take a better look at everyone's faces. He could not see the gallery of accusing stares and angry looks he had prepared himself emotionally for. Keitaro could only see Shinobu crying and holding on to Narusegawa Naru with Kaolla trying to comfort her of things he expected.   
  
The others stared at Keitaro with something he could barely recognize: sympathy. Everywhere he looked, eyes of sympathy greeted him. Trekking through his inner psyche, the women who had always tortured and antagonized him had never see his life from the inside. The light in the distance had grown narrower. If he did not get his act together quickly, the most wonderful, compassionate, caring women in his life would all die here. He would not last quite as long as Kaolla had predicted. He had at most two minutes left until the final curtain. Motoko stepped out from the crowd and handed him her blade. "Ken had followed us here. You will need this to fight him."  
  
Keitaro looked down at the sword and realized that he harbored a hatred for weapons now. For seven hours, Keitaro had fought Ken with every weapon imaginable and every blow he scored against him made him more powerful. The more he fought, the stronger he got. Keitaro threw the blade aside.   
  
"Everything in nature contained its opposite." Keitaro spoke with careful clarity as he rose from the scene of his disgrace. One day, he would repair the damage he had done to Maehara Shinobu, but he had to live for him to do that. The wisest elder had seen the pools of torment brewing inside Keitaro at a young age and armed him with a single phrase to unite the last reserves of his strength in his time of need. "I need no weapon to fight him."  
  
Motoko questioned his decision to enter a battle against a fully-armored opponent, but Otohime Mutsumi pulled her aside. After whispering something to her, Motoko reached for Keitaro. "If anything happens, remember ..." Motoko formed a V-shape with her hand and clapped her hands shut, opened it again and closed it again. Everyone else seemed to understand that this strange hand sign meant, but it had not quite registered with Keitaro. Narusegawa joined in. Kaolla turned away from Shinobu to start clapping. Mutsumi and Kitsune joined in as well. He still did not understand its significance, but seeing everyone supporting him as life slipped away into a dim light in the distance fortified his newfound strength.  
  
"Look what I found." Ken tossed the crustacean at Keitaro. As a reflex, he set it down and smashed his foot against it. "Temper, temper, Keitaro. I gave her a mild example of your carnal self. When I get the other girls, I will feed them your dirty little fantasies and leave them all traumatized wrecks." The shape of Ken floated from the horizon where the light had continued to flow into the distant singularity in space.   
  
"I talk too much. Enough talk. [Fight me]." Keitaro smiled as he felt nothing from Ken's command. Ken felt fear. He must have assumed his powers would work, even though he never tested them. He heard the tone and understood how he should have reacted, but nothing more than the slight urge to fight him had entered his body. His powers had atrophied outside the domains and his will had no power over him anymore.  
  
"I will enjoy tearing you to pieces," Ken replied to his silence raising his sword to slice down Keitaro's frail body, hoping to cut him in half right down the middle. The image of the V-shaped clap entered his mind as the sword descended on him. In seconds, his hands flew out at the sword and intercepted it, catching the sword in his bare hands. As the sword sat in his grip, that strange and painful jolt of static electricity passed between them. The jolt grew more and more intense until the sword exploded into shards.   
  
Floating into the air, Ken dove back down and lifted Keitaro airborne. Ken threatened to take him to the highest point and drop him. Barely listening to his threats, Keitaro pressed his hands into Ken's face. Pain greeted Keitaro as jolts of electricity passed through them. Keitaro and Ken's body grew transparent as the pain came to the brink of forcing them unconscious. As the pain weakened him, the other girls bombarded Ken with everything in their arsenal. One of Kaolla's missile struck Ken and caused him to careen into the girls and smashed into the middle tablet of the self-images, the empty one, smashing it to bits.   
  
*****  
  
As Keitaro looked at his body, he realized that he had obliterated Ken in the crash. But as he felt a scar along his left eye, he realized that he had obliterated Kei in the crash as well. Keitaro had Ken's trench coat, with Kei's normal clothes underneath.   
  
The light in the distance had nearly disappeared. In a brilliant act of awakening, Keitaro understood what he had done. Keitaro always thought he had created Ken only. He had actually dreamed up two versions of himself, Ken and Kei, and had fallen asleep as a child, allowing them to handle his chaotic life. Kei had lived so much of Urashima Keitaro's life, making so many decisions for him, he thought he had kept his soul when Ken separated from him. Only Ken knew better, only Ken knew he had lost a part of himself in the separation. Neither had their souls intact, each contained the half missing from the other. No wonder he had stopped breathing.   
  
A creature with two broken halves cannot operate itself. Only something with both halves intact and together can work. A smile emerged in his face as he floated into the air. He folded his legs into a full lotus blossom. From what he could tell, his body had started breathing again, now he needed to wake up. A bright light formed inside Urashima Keitaro as he felt himself returning to the real world.   
  
Keitaro could feel Shinobu's teary eyes staring up at him. He had assessed the fragmented halves of his soul, but now he needed to make use of his reassembled soul. When he returned to the real world, he would find someone who would help her cope with what had happened to her. The creature forced people to live out fantasies and she had yet to reach the emotional maturity to experience that. In fact, all the girls he lived with needed help coping. Neither the Keitaro they knew or the Ken they despised existed in a real sense of the word and he would have to make all that very clearly to them when he returned.   
  
Keitaro woke up and found strings and needles inside his neck and a helmet around his head. In a circle around him, the other girls started to wake up. Urashima Keitaro looked up to realize the sun had risen. He had returned everyone to the real world as he planned to, but in a state of sleep where they remained until they awoke. Like Kitsune always had to after drinking, Keitaro now had to face the day after.  
  
  
  
  
  
CONCLUSION COMING SOON … 


	5. Shinobu Eyes

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Save Keitaro  
Shinobu Eyes  
  
  
  
Urashima Keitaro awoke before all the girls did. He hated himself from the thing he wanted to do to Maehara Shinobu, since it felt like an easy way out of this sad situation. Surely, he would find the courage to confront Shinobu and take responsibility for his dark side and his own fantasies, but right now Maehara Shinobu needed a chance to live a day in her old life again before he drew the curtain of reality down onto her. Keitaro worried about whether the other girls would agree with his decision, because he needed their participation to make this work.   
  
No matter, he would do this quicky before he lost his nerve. He reached from Shinobu's limp and sleeping body and disconnected the helmet from her head. Su Kaolla had dressed Shinobu in some kind of jumpsuit that must have blanketed her senses because Shinobu could not feel his trembling hands as he lifted her up into his embrace. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Shinobu's clothes in a pile and gathered them on top of the jumpsuit, where Shinobu would not feel them.   
  
Walking up the stairs, Keitaro opened the door to Shinobu's room. The room looked quiet and pleasant, just like Shinobu herself in many ways. Keitaro wanted to leaved the room in the exact condition he entered it. He resented the fact that his own fantasies had not promised Shinobu such a luxury.   
  
He remembered the night he had dreamed up the fantasy of him and Shinobu together. Urashima Keitaro had tied himself to the bed in a hotel room he had to share with Narusegawa. That night, the personality of Kei had vivid dreams and that horrible nightmare Naru made her presence known. He even remembered what started the first debate. "If Narusegawa loves you so much, why didn't she tie you to the bed?"   
  
Unprepared at first to met the nightmare with an answer, Kei instead ran from her, until he found himself in the deepest reaches of his carnal passions, a part of his brain he boarded and blockaded after he moved into the Hinata-sou. Kei's curiosity got the best of him and he broke into the abandoned room and found Shinobu waiting for him. He found all the girls waiting for him. Aoyama Motoko. Su Kaolla. Konno "Mitsune" Kitsune. He found all of them waiting and eager to meet his every whim. At first, he made no request, but the mental images reasoned that bottling up all that frustration towards Narusegawa would only result in him losing his faith in Narusegawa Naru altogether.   
  
Having swallowed the bait, the mental images continued to argue that Narusegawa would never have to see anything that happened here, no one would. Kei could unleash all his sexual frustration in a rapid succession of carnal fantasies and return to his Narusegawa a new man. Out of the fear of losing his faith in Narusegawa, he yielded to carnal passions and spent the night in and out of all the girls at the Hinata-sou. Sure, he mixed in his own trademark sentimental mushiness, but it all ended the same, knee deep in lust. As they had promised, he awoke and felt renewed and refreshed. The mental images had not lied to him about feeling better, but Kei did not expect that horrible filthy feeling to rise inside him and he made himself swear an oath he would never do that again.  
  
In that night ruled by weakness and fear, Kei had planted the seed of this sad state of affairs, but he had to strengthen his resolve. The fragments of depression inside him abhored the goal-oriented thinking he had started. In reaction to their disgust, Keitaro knew he had to keep it up, keep subduing his growing depression with reason and direction. As Keitaro stared at Shinobu's conspicuous jumpsuit, Keitaro realized that he would have to remove the jumpsuit and put on Shinobu's pajamas. All that would require him to see and feel enough of Shinobu to maneuver all the undergarments in place.   
  
With the distinctions of choosing between Ken and Kei obliterated, he feared that he might do something to Shinobu in this state of physical and emotional vulnerability. With a pair of scissors, Keitaro removed the suit from Maehara Shinobu in strips and slowly slipped on her panties, trying not to stare as Shinobu's nude body as he did.   
  
/This morning, you will wake up from a horrible nightmare and see your room and realized you must have dreamed it all up./ Keitaro sighed as he put on Shinobu's sleeping gown and laid her onto her bed. /God have mercy on my soul./  
  
Keitaro pulled the covers over Maehara Shinobu. He kissed Shinobu on the forehand. "Sleep tight."   
  
Before he had completely left the room, Shinobu started to stir from her sleep. As he had nearly reached the door, Shinobu had awakened. "Sempai, that you? Please, Sempai, stay, I had a horrible nightmare, keep me company." Keitaro walked back and sat down at the foot of her bed. "Oh, Sempai, it felt so real. You would not believe me if I told what had happened to me in my dream. It felt horrible. Do you have any idea what it feels like not to have control over your own body?" Keitaro nodded sympathetically. Ken had subjected Kei to repeated use of his willpower and every time his voice took that tone with him, he could not nothing except listen and obey, his will buried. Ken would have forced Kei to have his way with the nightmare Naru, if he did not lust after Naru himself. Shinobu took a close look at her Sempai.   
  
"If I lost control of my body, would you ... take advantage of me?" Keitaro nodded. No, if he could live out Kei's actions again, he would choose to run from the carnal passions and find another way to vent his frustration towards Naru. "Thank you, Sempai, I needed that." Keitaro smiled as he silently wished more people saw him through Shinobu eyes, especially his beloved Narusegawa. If Naru returned his feelings, then he would finally achieve the unity he had journeyed to the depths of his nightmares for.  
  
*****  
  
Narusegawa Naru wanted to scream and tell Keitaro to march back up there and take responsibility for what Kei had done to Maehara Shinobu. She still had trouble believing the idea that she had never met the real Urashima Keitaro until now, she had gotten used to seeing Kei and treating him like Ken. Neither Ken nor Kei existed any longer and from the ashes of those two personalities, Keitaro had reemerged from an ancient slumber to reclaim his throne in the depths of his psyche. Whatever had happened, she felt that Keitaro needed to grow from this experience by letting Shinobu know.  
  
Of course, this Keitaro's newfound charm and tendency to babble caught her speechless and he had made some effective points amidst her momentary loss of words. Shinobu still had years to go before she could wrap her young mind around issues of sexuality and she needed time to grow until then. That reason checked out.   
  
Then, Keitaro brought up the point that the fantasy had left no physical traces of Shinobu and if she awoke in her room, she would never find a physical trace of what happened. Perhaps with time the emotional traces would follow the same path of extinction as the physical traces. Inside this new and improved Keitaro still beat the heart of a good man, but now he handled the verbal ammunition necessary to make that fact known loud and clear by everyone within earshot. He would not experience his accidents or misspoken words, he would always know the right thing to say and when to say it.   
  
Basically, it made Naru madly jealous and somewhat weary of the other girls. With Keitaro's new vocabulary and attitude, Naru worried about keeping the girls away from him. As a nerd who never knew the right thing to say, ever, Naru never had to worry about all this before.   
  
Fortunately, Keitaro made it very clear that he loved Naru with all his heart and would never betray her faith in him. Still, Naru would now have to keep a close eye on the other girls, especially that Aoyama Motoko. She had taken quite a shine to Kei and even Ken to a lesser extent, and this Keitaro would probably bring her to experience her own seldom-seen feminine side in ways Naru did not want to imagine.   
  
Either way, Naru realized she would still have to give this Keitaro a chance to live his life. As long as the other girls kept their distant, but polite attitudes towards him, Naru could enjoy the rest of her life as Keitaro's one and only girl and perhaps someday his wife.  
  
*****  
  
Maehara Shinobu remembered why she had loved Urashima Keitaro in the first place. She could hear him downstairs trying to orchestrate a cover-up of everything that had happened last night. Shinobu smiled as Su Kaolla and Keitaro plunged into an argument about whether or not she should destroy the interactive environment.   
  
Shinobu pleaded silently for Kaolla's side of the argument to win out; that interactive environment had reminded her why she loved Keitaro the way she did. The real Keitaro would never have done what the dream Keitaro had done if he had the full consequences of his actions in mind. The real Keitaro would do anything to stop the cold curtain of reality from crashing down on his precious Shinobu. Keitaro did not care about her in precisely the way she had spent many sleepless nights hoping he would, but he did care for her and right now nothing else besides that solemn fact mattered.   
  
Granted, Shinobu could never look at her Sempai with the same naive innocence ever again. Still, it probably served a higher that she could no longer imagine herself and Keitaro together in that way. Keitaro's heart belonged to Naru. Or, more likely the case now, their hearts belonged to each other.  
  
/Oh, god./ Maehara Shinobu looked at the clock. Morning had arrived and she needed a couple hours to prepare breakfast. She checked her facial expressions in the mirror for consistency. Until Keitaro planned to "reveal" the true nature of her nightmare, she would have to pretend she knew nothing about last night except that horrible experience. She knew she would not have to wait very longer. Her Sempai had a good heart and he did not have much of track record with maintaining deceptions for long, no matter much he tried. Shinobu smiled as Urashima Keitaro walked into her room. She had judged her Sempai correctly. From the look on his face, he had something important to tell her.   
  
"Shinobu, I need to tell you something about that nightmare you had last night. You might not like what you hear, but I can't lie to you, my conscience would never allow it." Shinobu had met the mental image in charge of his conscience and from the looks of things, Keitaro had just listened to his advice. Shinobu smiled and listened carefully to her Sempai's confession. Shinobu could not have more pride in her Sempai than she did right then in that moment in time.   
  
  
  
  
  
THE END 


End file.
